Hezbollah Leader Boasts of Lessons Learned from Fighting in Syria

The Algemeiner reports: The second-in-command of Hezbollah, Iran’s Shia proxy in Lebanon, has told an audience in Tehran that the terrorist organization vastly improved its military and fighting capabilities during its defense of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria in recent years.

Speaking with students at the Imam Sadegh University in Tehran on Sunday, Hezbollah deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem said that before engaging in the fighting alongside Iranian troops to rescue Assad’s crumbing rule, Hezbollah fighters only knew how to use “weapons like machine guns and missiles but did not have heavy weapons and equipment like tanks.”

Qassem underlined that Hezbollah had now “gained more experience” as a result of the fighting in Syria. “When we went to Syria, we learnt how to fight in the desert and we also learnt urban warfare and how to liberate cities, one house and one street at a time,” Qassem said, in remarks reported by Iranian official news agencies. “We became skilled in driving tanks and using all types of missiles.”